The Smiling Boy

In the highlands east of the capital, nestled among windswept valleys and pine-crowned hills, stood the ancestral seat of House Taranis. A minor noble line loyal to the Rolan crown, known for producing generations of dutiful knights—honorable, blunt, and proud of their battle-worn steel.

It was into this world that Timothy Taranis was born. A brown-haired boy with the greenest of eyes. At that time, the maids in the manor could not ascertain if the baby would grow to be a handsome man, yet they all agreed that he was a beautiful baby already.

There was something else they all agreed to.

From time to time, the baby would grin in a very mature, very conscious way. It wasn't an evil grin at all, but a gentle, understanding smile that inflated his little cheeks and closed his eyes in a caring and loving way. Everyone melted before that smile at first, but for some reason, the frequency and just perfect timing of that smile made it look more macabre than the most ill-intended smile ever.

He cried like any other newborn, but his mind—his true self—was not new. It stirred behind infant eyes with the echo of a dying breath and a bargain struck with a smiling god. The warmth of a mother's touch, the pride in a father's stance, the innocent comfort of the nursery—these filled his new soul. But beneath them, like stone under moss, it seemed something stirred. The maids often said that the baby would pierce one's soul with that look and smile... as if he knew all of their secrets.

Time passed quickly in the rhythm of noble life: sword drills at dawn, etiquette lessons at noon, family hunts, and chapel visits. He played the dutiful son, and in truth, he loved his family more than he expected to. But every moment spent nodding at old war stories, every meal shared under the golden crest of House Taranis, only sharpened a secret conviction—one no one could ever know.

At age ten, it happened. 

It was a time when Lord Taranis deemed him suitable for swordmanship, and so Timothy began to train with an instructor. He was the third son and the sixth child born in the Taranis Household. Without any hope of inheriting his father's lands, his only chance was to either marry into another family and inherit those lands or join the knights at the capital and have a shot at glory.

It was about this time that the Royal Academy in Rolan sent its instructors to every piece of land to perform the annual Magical Affinity Test, or as it was known in the countryside, the MAT. As part of the Taranis family, he was the first to perform the test. Down went his hand on the strange handle in the sphere, and to everyone's surprise, the orb with a handle that was supposed to glow in any of the colors of the five elements of magic didn't even flinch.

The instructors patted his shoulder, saying they were sorry.

Lord Taranis and his wife were ashamed. A son of theirs without magical affinity? Marrying him off to another family was now out of the question. No one would ever take him in!

The maids behind them, however, saw that little Timothy simply... smiled. He was smiling! He had just suffered perhaps the single greatest shame a kid in the Kingdom of Rolan could endure—not having magic—and yet he simply accepted this like a mature grown-up. 

The maids speculated: either he was the most mature and level-headed being in the universe, or his birth had been so traumatic that he had snapped beyond recovery.

In reality, Timothy couldn't be happier.

He knew something the others didn't.

One morning, the wind grew still in the northern woods of his family’s domain. He stood alone, breath clouding in the crisp air, practicing a simple sword form when something shifted. The ground pulsed. The stone beneath his feet felt... light.

Then heavy.

Then silent.

He exhaled, and the frost-laced pine needles around him bent low—not from wind, but from pull.

It wasn’t a surge or an explosion. It was subtle, elegant, precise. Like the world had exhaled in his direction. And in that moment, Timothy smiled.

Gravity.

Not as burden, but as instrument.

His smile back in the MAT was not one of contempt. It was one of contained excitement. Not only did he possess magic, but it was so rare that even the Royal Academy's artifacts were unable to detect it. He had been marked as a hopeless kid, but things couldn't be any farther from the truth.

This was his first true step in his master plan to become the mastermind he had envisioned.

From then on, each morning began the same way. Before sunrise, he slipped into the woods, where no steward or brother would find him. There, between the trees and mists, he taught himself the art of weight—how to press, how to lift, how to still. Then he would practice the sword with his instructor, who had received clear orders from Lord Taranis to be as harsh as possible.

By eleven, he could make an arrow fall early and cause his blows to hit heavier than usual.

By twelve, he could silence the footsteps of a deer, and he had managed to match his instructor's strength when crossing swords.

By the age of fourteen, a satisfied instructor reported to Timothy's father that there was nothing else he could teach him, and a pleased Lord Taranis let him off the hook for a little while.

This gave little Timothy free rein to wander beyond the family domain. He went and faced numerous critters and people. Monsters. Bandits. A mix of both. Each time, the young scion of the Taranis household grew stronger.

At fourteen, Timothy Taranis ventured where no border-born noble was expected to wander. He left behind the sleepy hills of his family's estate and crossed into the Parcatia Mountains—a jagged ridge of rock and pine that divided the rustic outer provinces from the inner lands of wealth, silk, and secrets.

It was not curiosity that drove him, but calculus.

The Parcatia Pass was a land of danger—feral magic beasts, rogue mages, bandit lords turned ghosts of fallen houses. It was also the only stretch of land where nobles from both sides of the kingdom sometimes collided.

Timothy had read of such things in dry reports and border patrol ledgers. But paper taught nothing of real predators.

And that morning, as he floated silently above the fog that permeated the mountain pass, he found one.

Or rather, several.